two santa cruz police officers killed on duty are laid to rest after a memorial that drew thousands from across california. a new record on wall street as the dow jones hits an all-time high. what could that really mean for bay area workers and silicon valley businesses? new state of the art tunnels are making a dangerous oceanside highway safer. but some drivers could miss the heavenly vistas of devil's slide. and urban planner stuart cohen has some ideas for avoiding the nightmare ride to work known as the mega-commute. coming up next.

good evening. welcome to "this week in northern california." i'm joshua johnson. let's dive into our roundtable discussion. joining us tonight on the news panel are paul rogers, science and environment reporter for the "san jose mercury news." tom vacar, consumer editor for ktvu news. and martha mendoza, reporter for the "associated press" based in santa cruz. welcome, everyone. yesterday, thousands of law enforcement officers came together in honor of santa cruz police sergeant loran "butch"

baker and detective elizabeth butler, shot dead last week by a suspect they were questioning about a sexual assault. the memorial was so big, organizers moved it to hp pavilion in san jose. mm martha, you were at the event. what struck you about it? >> it was really a sad, sad day. it was shakingly sad. there came a moment when one of the officers' partners picked up their son, 5-year-old waukeen. he has his mom's hat over his eyes and holding a teddy bear. you just see this is a kid who's never going to have his mom again. and, you know, her longtime boyfriend just said that he had promised her when he had seen her body that he would always take care of these kids. there were so many people who just loved both of these officers. >> this was really kind of an unprecedented outpouring of grief for santa cruz when they decided to move it from kaiser

permanente arena downtown to hp pavilion, it was clear they weren't sure exactly what kind of reaction they were going to get or how deeply the community needed to grieve to get this out of its system. >> it's true. this wasn't just the community of santa cruz grieving by any stretch. what happened at hp pavilion was police from all over california came. there was -- i've never been around so many thousands and thousands of police officers. and everybody was there in full uniform to honor these two colleagues of theirs. and what one captain from tustin who had driven 400 miles up told me was he and everybody else was just thinking there but for the grace of god go i. he said, the investigation they were doing, the same thing i've done hundreds and hundreds of times. could have been any of us. >> i live in santa cruz, as martha does. i live two blocks from where this happened. when i came home that night, there were s.w.a.t. teams around, schools in lockdown, helicopters in the air. santa cruz is a small town.

a lot of people know everybody. this was the big gest event in santa cruz since the 1989 earthquake. really has shaken the town to its core. there are questions people in town are asking. the main one is, how could this sociopath, jeremy goulet, who murdered the two officers, how could he have gotten through so many times when he committed other violent acts? the two places that i've really looked at that are so troubling, he was arrested and charged with four felonies in 2007 in oregon for trying to climb through a woman's window. her boyfriend came out. he had a gun. he took shots at him. he was charged with attempted murder. the jury left him off with two misdemeanors. he would still be in jail if not for that. the year before that was in the army in honolulu, charged with raping two. the army let him off and dropped the charges. >> do we know if the police officers that responded and were killed knew how seriously dangerous this guy was?

>> initially, the police and sheriffs were saying, you know, they just didn't know, but subsequently, after a few days they said in their investigation of what these officers' case files looked like, they had found, indeed, they did know this person had a serious criminal history. they were going to investigate and actually ask him questions about a misdemeanor sexual assault case. and they actually were going to go try to hear his side of the story. what paul was saying about his military history is interesting, too, because former defense secretary leon panetta spoke at the memorial and said that he was troubled by the sexual assaults, troubled by the suicides he saw as defense secretary and said in many cases the military looked the other way and didn't take them seriously enough. that's grave. >> one other thing, i know these are well-trained officers. when you have a shock to the system like this, is this likely to change the way policing is done in santa cruz now? >> sure. i mean, we're a town where, and i think paul would agree, where

you don't want the police showing up to ask your side of the story in a misdemeanor accusation. you don't want them pounding on the door with guns drawn in bulletproof vests. there's no way the 92 remaining officers on that force are going to be taking such a casual, such a friendly approach. they can't. it's bound to change the way everybody in that town -- >> first time in 150 years that any officers have been killed in the line of duty in that town. >> let's be clear, part of the narrative of how this story played out is this wave of crime that swept over santa cruz and this is the culmination of rising crime, rising crime. that's not really a fair perception to santa cruz. >> it's been a lazy kind of reporting often from out of town reporters. i lived there 24 years. i used to cover the santa cruz police department in the early '90s. there have been a couple high-profile crimes recently like this one. ten years ago, i looked up the statistics in santa cruz, there were four homicides. last year, three homicides. 43 rapes ten years ago.

97 robberies ten years ago. last year, 83 robberies. the crime rate pretty much is the same. it bounces around a little bit. santa cruz remains a very safe beach town. i think that's why something this violent and this just shocking has really affected the town. and, you know, people will remember these cops 30, 40 years from now in this town. this will not go away. >> but what shook people is how random it was. and there's been a serious of crimes that were just random and evil. so, last year there was a woman walking down the street in middaylight stabbed by a man. recently there was a woman at a bus stop who somebody stole her stuff and shot her in the back of her head. so it's very arbitrary. people are looking for a pattern. you know, is it the homeless people? is it the drug problem? is it gangs? as paul, you know, went and looked into it, it's random evil. >> it is worth noting the city of santa cruz has a scholarship set up in honor of sergeant

baker and detective butler and the information for donating to the scholarship is on the city's home page for people who want to continue to honor, i believe the effort raised $125,000. downtown businesses pledged from the very beginning. so another way to honor the memories of these two fallen officers. some positive economic indicators to end the week. the dow jones industrial average keeps breaking records. it closed today at another all-time high of 14397. also the labor department says national unemployment is down to 7.7%. california's employment numbers were supposed to come out today. they're coming out in two weeks. tom vacar, all of this looks good for the biggest businesses. the ones at the very top. certainly hearing that the dow is up and joblessness is down. looks good. but all that glitters, you know, what does this really mean? >> it means that in ultimate terms that the economy is starting to gain traction, but it's still very slow traction. we do know that if you had the average amount of money a person

has in a 401(k), $77,000, invested in the dow jones industrial average when it hit its all-time high five years ago, today you have basically not made a penny. in fact, you've lost money because inflation, though small, has eaten up more than that. you've made no money on dow jones. normally one would expect a return of 4% to 8% a year. the stock market has a long way to go. a lot more money is going into stocks. they seem to be paying better now than bonds and other debt instruments. that's very important. that's one thing. job growth is absolutely real. there's no question about it. unfortunately, when the sequester really starts to bite, about three months' worth of job gains, $250,000 per month or $750,000, will be lost. so unemployment will remain at the same level or increase just slightly in the united states if they don't settle this thing. and then finally, are we likely to have a recession because of all this? the answer is likely we will not have a recession because the

underlying economy is grinding forward. but the bottom line is that while it is glittering, it is certainly not gold. we have a long way to go. that's how bad this recession was. most people, i think, still don't realize this was about as bad as it gets. certainly some people think it was as bad as the depression. >> talk to us as a bay area workforce, whether you worked in silicon valley or just work in the bay area. maybe not in the tech sector. i always kind of wonder about how what happens on wall street really lands on my street. what would we actually feel? granted we have huge companies in the bay area who have a different relationship with the dow components than we do. for the bay area's economy, what might this mean? >> i think for the bay area's economy it means one thing. that is that as long as the economy has traction and people are buying things and businesses are expanding, then you have good news because they're going to need those goods and services and that's great. the problem going forward, though, is that you have to make sure that you individually have the skills that are needed. for example, many people that work in the bay area environment

don't have many skills, and in that, in this society, that's brutal. now, one of the big improvements that's taken place, these are skilled workers, in construction. construction is actually starting to grow after having been hit, losing more than one out of three jobs. so that's a good thing, but those are skilled workers that know exactly what they're doing and even the people that learn to do that have to pick up certain amount of skills. if you're basically without skills or have skills that are no longer needed, you're out of luck in this economy here or anywhere else in the country. >> you know, some of the numbers are pretty dramatic. four years ago, january, february '09 when obama first took office, we were losing 800,000 net jobs a year in the united states. like you say, the worst economy since the great depression. last month we gained 236,000. that is 1 million-net swing. housing is coming back. we've got corporate earnings, all-time high. as you mentioned, the stock market, four record days in a row. how is this playing out -- i mean, all the arrows, just

about, many of the arrows are up. how is this playing out in the bay area? are there parts of the bay area getting more of it than others? >> sure. silicon valley clearly is the shining star of the bay area's economy. because housing prices have been depressed, housing is doing well pretty much anywhere in the bay area. high end, middle, low end, because people are coming in now. one of the changes has been, it's not just a bunch of people with a lot of cash coming in buying houses on the cheap. a lot of people are now actually going out, buying houses to live in and a lot of people actually starting to put their houses on the market are people who own those houses who want to move up. that's the real driver of the future. >> interest rates are still low. >> interest rates remain low, likely to remain low. banks are a little more lenient about things. you still have to prove you have an income, but it doesn't take you months and months and months. generally speaking if you can prove what you can prove, to actually get a house or to actually buy property and things like that. so, again, the economy is gaining traction.

northern california is doing better than southern california. and we're doing better than the rest of the nation. but the reality is that if we can get this sequester thing out of the way, then the traction for the entire u.s. economy is likely to two forward. that will be good for the bay area. we supply so much of what the world needs. >> briefly before we move on, what do you think is the biggest weak spot in terms of the bay area's economy? >> i think the biggest weak spot in terms of the bay area's economy is a collapse somewhere elsewhere our products and services were needed. some big financial reversal in china wouldn't do us good. a big financial reversal on the korean peninsula which is a possibility or japan. or a real bad spate worse than it is in europe. those kind of things can hurt us. we're exporters of our goods and services to them. >> we'll keep on eye on it. i'd be interested to see the unemployment numbers when it comes out in a few weeks. caltrans is finishing up a tunnel on the san mateo coast. the first built in california in 50 years.

the devil's slide tunnel south of pacifica should provide a smoother ride to half moon bay without the threat of landslides. paul rogers, what differences will we notice once the tunnel is open? >> you're not going to be able to see the ocean when you drive from half moon bay to pacifica. you know, the thing that's so interesting about this, it's an amazing engineering project. as you mentioned, first tunnel in 50 years built in northern california. i think all of california. i believe the third bore of the caldacot which opened in the east bay was the last tunnel. this thing is two about a mile long, 4,000 feet in each direction. $439 million project. they've been at it for seven years now. i drive past it once a week. and i've been watching them chip away little by little. what's fascinating about it to me is that it's the culmination, really, of a nearly 50-year environmental battle. right? i mean, the highway 1 was built in the mid '30s. 1930s around that corner. and almost immediately by president 1940s, every time there was a big storm, rocks

would come down, wash out the road, and by the 1960s, early '60s, san francisco developers proposed building tens of thousands of new housing units on the hills behind pacifica, the hills behind the little towns along the san mateo coast. caltrans in 1960 drew up a plan for a six-lane freeway that would have gone right up over the top of the mountain, pacifica, to the airport at half moon bay. environmentalists started fighting. got it slowed down in a lawsuit in 1962 then jerry brown became governor and sort of stopped the project. it was stopped for a while. in the '80s, cranked it right back up again. as many folks may remember, the sierra club community for green foothills and others, in 1996, they finally won this battle with a measure they put on the ballot in san mateo county. measure "t" for tunnel they used to say. it passed 74% to 26%. it took a while to get the

money. you know, this project is one of the major environmental victories in the last 50 years on the northern california coast. >> they've made it a real environmental project. so the walls on the outside, they actually took prints off of cliffside and then they rebuilt them there using artists who worked on the "indiana jones" sets. yeah, these really intricate painted rocks that are supposed to look natural. they took all the dirt out of the tunnel and created a hillside they've planted over. going through them is kind of a cool experience. they're slick and white and smooth inside. it's like an austrian tunnel. my concern, and it's probably irrational, is tunnels and earthquakes in california. >> as you wrote, though, in a fabulous story about this recently, this can withstand, 7.5, an 8.0? >> just around there. >> i would certainly hope so. >> they have pass-through tunnels. if anyone is going to be going through, they can know any time you get stopped in there, if

there's an emergency which god forbid would happen, there are turns that go in between the two tunnels that are fire safe rooms. >> and even lane to pull over. they have carbon dioxide detecters. they have i think nitrogen detecters, nitrous oxide detecters. they've got 16 fans that are gigantic that if there is a fire or smoke or toxic material, they can blow it right out the tunnel, no problem. and it is a marvel of engineering so much so it actually has a separate block house where as many as 15 people will manage that tunnel because it is that high-tech. it's truly remarkable. >> the digging, right, they had to bring machines they use in austria. as i remember you writing, martha, this thing was well over budget. it was supposed to be five years and $240 million. >> yeah. >> it's seven years, $439 million. why was it over budget? what happened? >> there's no way of doing a really good mri as it were of a

mountain. they had a set for soft soil they took out and a whole set for hard. when they hit hard, they'd have to come out and re-machine with a new batch of machinery to take out the other, the harder soil. >> this is close to opening, isn't it? >> very close to opening. my favorite part is they're not going to shut off the spectacular coastal trail. they're going to turn it into a back route and park. having ridden by bike through there many times, it's a thrill. >> when i moved here 2 1/2 years ago to join kqed, that's the first drive i took. i did devil's slide. oh my god, this is the most terrifying -- would you look at -- this is the most terrifying. i'll have to get my bike out. >> on labor day we have the bay bridge. this is the year of infrastructure. >> california is alone in the whole country for this. >> martha mendoza, paul rogers, tom vacar. thank you. two reports came out this week that should be of interest to commuters. a quarter of all roads in california will be in failed

condition, meaning damaged beyond repair, within ten years. that's according to the recent california statewide local roads assessment. another report from the census bureau says the bay area has the nation's highest share of what it calls mega-commuters. those are people who commute at least 90 minutes and 50 miles each way. one man who's working on solutions to our growing gridlock is stuart cohen. he's co-founder of the oakland based add vo advocacy group, transform. earlier today, cohen shared his ideas for how we can stop building roads around cities and start building cities around people. stuart cohen, welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> how did we get to this point? how did the bay area become the nation's leading region for mega-commuters? what have we done wrong that no one else has done quite so

wrong? >> about 50 years ago like a lot of the ref st of the country, w started designing our communities and transportation system as if people would have to drive for every trip. we started putting homes very far away from where job centers are. and i think, you know, we know what people want. people want a place where they can walk to activities and parks and shops and restaurants. and we've just edngineered that out of a lot of people's lives. we've done a great job of protecting our open spaces, but we haven't done a good enough job of making sure where we are growing we're providing homes for people of all incomes. >> so we basically built the bay area to be the kind of place where you've got to drive? >> that's right. and these mega-commuters that we've been hearing a little bit more about are just in search, really, of affordable homes. >> it seems like people are in that search going farther and farther out. there are more and more places. one of the mega-commute routes listed as one of the worst in the country in this census study

was from stockton to alameda county. they're going farther and farther out until they find a place to live. >> i passed a sign heading out toward tracy ten years ago that said drive another 15 miles, save $100,000. i didn't have my camera with me, but that drive until you qualify for a mortgage is part of this problem. and we've been focusing our transportation investments to accommodate that. spending billions of dollars on highway expansions. when all that's happening is we're just flowing more and more long-distance commuters in, clogging up the roads, and so we've got to get away from that pattern and we're starting to. >> so what do we do? >> that's the question ahead, how do we invest our transportation dollars? how do we grow differently? in terms of how we invest, we make sure that we're investing in existing communities and providing choices for people on how they get around. and so we are starting to put in more transit systems.

we are starting to invest in bicycle safety and, you know, making it easier to have crosswalks. we've got to accelerate that. let me just -- we need more bang for the buck. and so in san francisco, as an example, muni is slowing down as cars clog up the city. if we can just increase the speed of the buses by one mile an hour, from eight miles an hour to nine, we'll save $50 million a year on operating costs because you can do more trips. >> we have cars fighting with buses, fighting with muni, fighting with taxis, fighting with everything else. i would imagine that some people would think in order for someone to win this fight, someone else has to lose. in order for you to gain, i have to give up. >> that's a great question, with transportation and how we're growing, there are are win/wins we're not taking advantage of. one of ones in san francisco is going to be where we have really

high-volume bus lines like the geary line carrying 50,000 people a day stuck in traffic or behind double-parked vehicles. we give that its own dedicated lane. that will actually help attract even more people to it and meaning less cars driving on the city streets. and more people willing to go without even owning a car in san francisco if you can depend on muni which right now you can't. >> there's also the matter of the fact the bay area's population continues to grow. more and more people want to be here. the jobs are here. the economy is good here. where do we put all of these people and how do we allow traffic not to create even more mega-commuters? what do we do for the growing population? >> right. well, we have a tremendous amount of space in our urban fabric that we can build upon and even improve. the key thing is to really engage the community's values. when you start to do that. it becomes a better place that could actually reduce the amount

of driving. how is that possible? you take a place that has maybe vast parking lots and isn't that attractive and then you just build up to the sidewalks so that people can enjoy a vibrant street life. and what happens is you actually create destinations that make it that people living nearby suddenly have a place to walk to or have a short drive to instead of these long drives to everywhere we're going. so before growth and change is going to happen, we start by asking the community, what do you love about this place? we want to preserve that. but what do you need? we've been going around the whole region doing that in communities from antioch to san jose, and people say different things. but you can then offer that up as part of the planning process. and so in san leandro, they wanted a childcare center near b.a.r.t. center to do a quick drop-off. they wanted safer streets. they wanted a better grocery store downtown and wanted some

parks. it was included as part of the plan that came for their downtown. and what we saw was a huge embrace of that plan. it's now being implemented. >> where is the most right for beginning this kind of strategy? >> it's got to happen all over in the south bay. where a lot of the jobs are going. we've got huge opportunities along boulevards, like el camino, and in a lot of the wonderful downtowns that already exist in the bay area. it's really bringing back a lot of the type of growth that happened 100 years ago when you were just able to walk to your daily activities. >> you took b.a.r.t. here? >> i did. >> and walked from the 16th street? >> a beautiful day to do it. >> it is indeed. >> you are part of the solution. stuart cohen. appreciate it. >> appreciate it, too. >> thanks for our guests for taking part. thank you for watching. by the way, daylight saving time begins this sunday at 2:00 a.m. make sure your clocks spring forward one hour. we leave you tonight with a look at practice runs for this

year's america's cup yacht race on san francisco bay. i'm joshua johnson. enjoy your weekend. good night.